The BBC's Nick Higham reports"The show's producers were put under the same sort of scrutiny the housemates endure" real 56k

Monday, 28 August, 2000, 12:05 GMT 13:05 UK

Big Brother Sada attacks show

Sada Walkington: Claimed she was typecast as a "dippy hippy"

Evicted Big Brother contestant Sada Walkington has attacked the way she was portrayed on the show, saying she felt "betrayed" by its producers.

Walkington, 27, was the first contestant to be evicted from the Channel 4 surveillance show's specially-constructed house in Bow, east London, where a group of people are cut off from the outside world.

Evicted: Tom McDermott makes his exit on Friday

Speaking at the Edinburgh International Television Festival, she said she was upset at a description of her on the programme's website.

"I found them very cutting, highly destructive to my personality and I felt very betrayed," she said.

"We weren't told we were going to be manipulated slightly as personalities.

"I was typecast as a dippy hippy, southern, blonde, posh. People do believe that they know us, but your public persona and your private persona are very different things."

'Emotionally infantile'

She added she and the show's other female contestants had felt let down by the men chosen for the show.

"I did think the range of experience was lacking - they were very emotionally infantile," she said.

Disqualified: Nick Bateman's fate was under discussion

Walkington was speaking in a discussion about reality TV programmes such as Big Brother and the BBC's Castaway 2000 series.

Psychiatrist Raj Persaud accused the programme-makers of trying to justify the show as a "social experiment", and said that disqualified contestant Nick Bateman, who was caught cheating, had been portrayed as "a freak".

"The contestants' full complexity does not emerge, which is why I don't think it's fair to say it's a social experiment," he said.

"These people are being stereotyped and turned into freaks, so it's going to be psychologically very stressful for them."

Executive producer Peter Bazalgette told the audience of TV professionals that he was not trying to make any high-minded claims for the show, and denied it was being promoted as a social experiment.

"I was at meetings inside Channel 4 where we agreed not to say that, so if anyone says so, they're an idiot," he said to laughter.